4 Ways Technology is Ruining Your Brain Health

Many people these days are complaining that they can't focus. They're struggling with their memory. They just can't pay attention in a way that they used to. So in your view, what's going on?

Yeah, I mean, the world has changed, certainly. Technology, and I'm pretty pro-technology, it also, it maybe hasn't caused it, but it certainly has amplified some of that distraction, that digital distraction. I mean, we live in an age of rings and pings and dings and app notifications. social media alerts. And I feel like in a way that we're driven to be distracted. And how do you maintain your concentration, which is so important nowadays? We live in the attention economy, but we're rewiring our brains to react and to be able to focus every little thing that's in our purview. And how are you going to get things done? How are you going to learn? How are you going to study? How are you going to be productive? In my book Limitless, I talk about 4 digital It's like the Four Horsemen, if you will, of the mental apocalypse. And I tend to alliterate, so I made them all D's. The first one actually is digital distraction. With the rise of technology and every like and share and comment and cat video, and then we get those dopamine hits, we're kind of rewired to be distracted. Another one that we're facing that people, I think, are struggling with right now is this thing called digital deluge. It feels like there's too much information. But not enough time to go through it all. It feels— some people describe it as taking a sip of water out of a fire hose, maybe, or they're drowning in information. And how do you catch up and keep up and get ahead? And some of the things we could talk about here is I talk about accelerated learning, which I think is one of the most important skills to be able to master in the 21st century, to be able to catch up and really thrive. Accelerated learning could also be speed reading. You have so much to read. You know this in your field. And the half-life of information is getting shorter and shorter, but the amount of information is coming at dizzying speed. But how we read it or learn it, that growing gap creates information anxiety, higher blood pressure, compression of leisure time, more sleeplessness. So it could be a big challenge for people. And then there's one that I term digital deduction.

Digital deduction? That's the third one, right?

Yeah. Digital deduction. So you have digital distraction and digital deluge. Digital deduction is this phenomenon where it seems like this generation is not having the same ability to think or to rationalize, applied logic, critical thinking. And it could be because of technology. With algorithms, a lot of technology is doing the thinking for us, right? It's telling us, giving us our recommendation. It's telling us how to get from here to there. If you think about You know, way back before GPS, you know, we would have to build visual spatial intelligence in order for people to get from here to there. But now we rely on our devices, so we don't have to think. So we're outsourcing that. And then a big one is digital dementia. I mean, think about that. We're so reliant on technology to also be like our external memory drive. I mean, think about how many phone numbers, you know, your audience, you and I used to know growing up. I mean, a lot, right?

A lot.

Yeah. And how many do we know today? Current numbers, probably could count on one hand, maybe 1, 2, or 3. Not that I want to memorize 500 phone numbers, but it should be concerning that a lot of people complain about not being able to memorize one phone number or a PIN number or a passcode or a seed phrase or what they ate that day or conversation they just had. I believe 2 of the most costly words sometimes in our life, certainly in our work, are I forgot. I forgot to do it. I forgot to bring it. I forgot that meeting. I forgot that conversation. I forgot what I was gonna say. I forgot that person's name. You know, every single time we have those lapses, we could lose time and credibility. We could hurt a relationship.

Those are 2 powerful words, aren't they? I forgot. It's interesting because it's clearly something that is increasing in society. People in their 30s now are saying, you know, I just can't remember that. I can't remember where I put my keys. Right?

So Or something larger like their car.

Or something larger like their car.

You see people walking around the lot with their car alarms like GPS trying to figure out where to park their car.

So I want to sort of explore what's going on here. You mentioned these 4 Ds, right? And of course, they all start with digital. And you also mentioned that you're pro-technology, right? So it's not necessarily technology that's doing it. Maybe it's the way we're using that technology sometimes that's problematic. So, you know, let's, let's go through this one by one. I know you've outlined them, but digital distraction, I think we all kind of get that, that we can't focus because we're just drawn to our smartphone. And we're just, before we know it, we should be doing a work project. But somehow we've ended up down a Twitter rabbit hole, or we've been on Instagram for 10 minutes without even realising it.

Yeah.

What can we do about that?

Yeah, I mean, for me, technology is not necessarily good or bad. It's exactly what you said. It's how it's applied. Like, fire is a form of technology, and fire could cook our food or it could burn down our home, right? But you're right, it's how we're using it as opposed to it using us, right? Technology is a tool for us to use. But if technology is using us, then who becomes the tool? Then we become the tool, right? And so having agency, I think, is very important. a way of starting this conversation in terms of that we're not a victim, that we always are the pilot. We're the pilot of our lives instead of the passenger. We're the pilot of our minds. We're not the passenger. We don't have to just be reacting to it. My challenge is when people pick up the phone out of boredom, right? I mean, in terms of how many times have people opened up social media or touching their phone, or if it's at the table during a meal, it creates that kind of unconscious anxiety that's there. It's just the impulse to be able to pick it up. And so part of it is Obviously controlling the environmental aspect of it and knowing that we always have a choice. There's a quote in Limitless from a French philosopher, and he says, life is the letter C between the letters B and D. Life is C between B and D. B is birth, D is death. Life, C, choice. We always have that choice every single day. Our lives, in effect, is the sum total of all the choices we made up to this point. Where are we going to live? Who are we going to spend time with? What are we going to eat? What are we going to do for a living? What are we going to feed our mind? And I'm also thinking that when it comes to choices and the decisions that we make, I believe that even at a meta level, that these difficult times, they could distract us. We're talking about distraction. It could diminish us, or these difficult times can actually develop us. We always decide because we always have choice. Every day we wake up with a chance because we have choice. Right. And to take responsibility of it as opposed to putting it out there like something— I always use this metaphor that it's important for all of us to identify more with a thermostat than we do a thermometer. Meaning a thermometer, let's say a thermometer is in your room. What's its function? It just reacts to the environment. Whatever the environment gives it, it reacts. And as human beings, we are sometimes like that. We react to how people treat us. We can react to the weather. We can react to the economy.

Right.

all these different things. But ultimately, you know this, you write about happiness. The people that are most fulfilled, happy, successful, they tend to not react as much, right? They tend to maintain more of their agency. A thermostat has that agency. A thermostat doesn't react to its environment. A thermostat, it knows the temperature, it gauges, it has awareness, and it sets a temperature. And what happens to the environment? The environment reacts to it.